


New Design

by r_e_y_a



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: ...... maybe dumbledore bashing but no stupid nicknames, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Canon Rehash, Canon Rewrite, Gen, Time Travel, because idc, but if i do, i haven't decided if i'm going to include ships, no weasley bashing though, then hhr will at least be alluded to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:28:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26296423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_e_y_a/pseuds/r_e_y_a
Summary: Death is promised. And for that, she does not always accept souls when they come to pass.—It was slipping through his fingers as easily as the early morning sun filtering through the blinds. The details of his dream were fading quickly, even more the tighter he tried to cling to them. He remembered a bright, clear sky and a soft but firm voice. He couldn’t remember the words she had said, only the feeling that they had drawn out in him. Shock. Indignation. Finally, resignation — not acceptance, but the knowledge that just like everything else in his life, he had no say in what happened next.—“I’m serious! Stop doing it or I’m telling Dad!”“Dudley, we have bigger problems than your bloody Dad!”
Relationships: TBD.
Kudos: 13





	New Design

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I think it's kind of strange that in time travel fics, you have this adult character who goes back to their teenage body and they don't hate every second of being a teenager again. Thus, this was born. 
> 
> A bit of a different take on time travel. Will definitely be a canon re-hash with no direct quoting of the original book (because that's boring). Certain events will be different, but you will definitely recognize much of this. 
> 
> Updates will be sporadic!

A man, occasionally known to be wise but largely considered irresponsible, once said that passing on was as simple as falling asleep. The reality is, sometimes it’s not. Of course, it wasn’t really the _man_ who said that, so much as it was a pale imitation of his former self; it was a conjuring of a familiar face meant to draw the holder into the arms of Death, not a comforting spirit summoned in a time of desperate need. It could only be _expected_ that the man would tell untruths. Still, the counsel was not wholly incorrect. Passing on is, generally, the easiest thing that one will ever do, should one be lucky.

Eventually, everyone passes — even those who attempt to escape the end. Should one be lucky, Death will open her arms and take them into her embrace, accepting them as they were in life, bringing them _on_. The end, for the lucky ones, is as peaceful as one could ever hope for.

It’s the unlucky ones who, upon their death, face uncertainty. When they close their eyes and their souls depart their body, they are the ones who are denied. Death meets them at the Crossroads; her arms remain at her sides and she does not take them into her embrace. They’ve caught her eye, you see, and she does not want them as they were in life. They are the ones who have suffered most. They are the ones who deserve the justice they were denied. They are her _favourites_ — and she does not accept them into her embrace, because she instead bestows upon them a gift. A chance.

Because she is not Relief — she is Death, and she is promised. No matter how long it has been, or how many lifetimes you have lived, since your Birth.

* * *

On a particular summer morning, Harry Potter wakes in his bed, cotton t-shirt clinging to his wiry frame with sweat. The house — not his home, never his home — is silent, the only ambient sound being the buzzing of insects in the square gardens that sat uniformly along Privet Drive. And his heavy breathing.

It had been a dream, unlike the visions that had plagued him the year before, the ones he hadn’t remembered clearly until it was too late. The Graveyard. The poor groundskeeper who never found an escape from the tyranny of the Riddle family, even after their murders. Pettigrew and the gruesome fetal construct he’d sacrificed a hand to. Those had been nightmares, but they were _real_ ; the searing pain in his scar was not just in his mind and Harry knew that upon waking. But this time, it was just a dream.

It was slipping through his fingers as easily as the early morning sun filtering through the blinds. The details of his dream were fading quickly, even more the tighter he tried to cling to them. He remembered a bright, clear sky and a voice, soft but firmly telling him… something. He couldn’t remember the words she had said, only the feeling that they had drawn out in him; shock, like he was petrified by the Basilisk. Indignation, the bubbling offence in his chest building itself up into a boil. Finally, resignation — not acceptance, but the knowledge that just like everything else in his life, he had no say in what happened next.

_Where did that come from?_

Harry sat up blearily, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, brows drawing together. Over the last several years, there have been plenty of times that Harry had been frustrated by — well, everything. It wasn’t fair that he’d been given to the Dursleys, but as his only living relatives, they were the first ones to receive guardianship of him. There was nothing for it.

 _The Triwizard Tournament was a total farce_ , he thought, ignoring the horrible pang in his chest. Voldemort’s return aside — because in fairness, the organizers couldn’t have known that a thought-dead man would hijack their event — it was still a dangerous Tournament with a high death toll. They had set an age limit on it for that reason, and more importantly, Harry did not meet it. And because of some archaic magic binding him to the competition he hadn’t signed up for, they didn’t even _try_ to release him from it.

Still, even through all of the, erm, _adventures_ , that Harry had had, the feeling that all of it was predestined was not one that he’d ever felt before. He didn’t even _like_ Divination enough to believe in fate or some nonsense like it. Nothing ever felt like it was out of his control — at least, not in the way that he felt in his dream. Everything he’d done to get himself into trouble was literally _because_ he wanted to gain some kind of control over a situation. He’d never felt like getting involved was exactly what someone else — or Fate, if it existed — wanted him to do. But that’s what it seemed like dream-Harry thought.

He rose to his feet, busying himself with getting dressed in overlarge clothes and straightening up the piles of newspaper strewn about the room by Hedwig’s empty cage. Something felt different inside him. Yesterday, he’d penned a letter to his friends, pleading for information — what were they doing, where were they — and sent it off for answers. It had taken ages to write the letter. He didn’t want them to know that he was so desperate for news, he’d resorted to laying in the flowerbed beneath Number Four’s sitting room window — nor did he want them to know how hurt he was that they were together and keeping secrets from him, at least not about Voldemort.

Keeping secrets about _Voldemort_ from _him_.

Anyway, he’d written them a letter, crumpling up several attempts that weren’t good enough for whatever reason. They were too long, too emotional, too _bothered_. Then, once he’d penned a version that wouldn’t earn him his friends’ everlasting pity for merely being who he is, he’d sent it off and gone straight to sleep, ignoring the failed attempts on the desk and the floor.

It was strange, how much more calm he felt about it all now, almost like it didn’t even matter.

He gathered up the crumpled letters and tossed them in the rather large bin the Dursleys had forced upon him when they gave him the bedroom. At the time, Harry had wondered why they thought he would generate so much waste that he needed a bin the size of his torso, but now that he was older he was pretty sure that they gave it to him hoping he would climb right in and take himself out. Privately, Harry liked having it because there was less of a chance that his relatives would snoop through it than there was if he used the bin in the kitchen.

Once his room was straightened out, Harry wondered what he should do to pass the time. With nothing to do, Harry had done all but his Potions essay earlier in the summer, thanks to a letter from Hermione listing what each class assigned. Sure, his essays were going to be far from Outstanding given that Uncle Vernon had thrown his school trunk in the cupboard under the stairs the moment they’d returned from King’s Cross — and come to think of it, whenever Dumbledore (hopefully) sprung Harry from Privet Drive, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to redo them — but they were done. Every time Harry thought about Potions, Snape’s sneer flashed into his mind and Harry was instantly put off of the whole idea.

The Dursleys had long since stopped assigning him regular chores unless they took Harry out of their line of sight. Petunia had taken over the cooking entirely when Harry came back from school at the end of first year — Harry only assumed that they thought he brought home an assortment of potions to poison them with. Usually, they’d at least set him on the garden, but there was a drought that killed all the weeds — the flowers, too — and Aunt Petunia had decided that she would prove she could revive the grass all on her own. Harry didn’t exactly put it past them to accuse him of _causing_ the drought as a means of getting out of his chores if he asked, so he carefully avoided the topic.

There was nothing for it, then. Another day of wandering the Surrey streets was ahead of him. He’d return in time to hover under the windowsill and listen to the news, and maybe he’d be lucky and find some discarded Muggle newspapers.

Carefully, Harry crept down the stairs, listening for heavy footsteps and tittering; he wanted to escape the house without being seen, just the way everyone liked it. Glancing at the wall clock, Harry realized that it was late enough that Uncle Vernon would be at work and relaxed slightly. Aunt Petunia wasn’t any better than he was, but he could hear the sink running and knew that she wouldn’t interrupt her housekeeping on his account.

His hand was on the door handle when dread settled into his stomach. It was slick, dense; the kind of dread that’s sure of itself, that froze him in his tracks. Aunt Petunia was still washing dishes in the kitchen and if she turned around, she’d have a clear line of sight to him. He urged himself to open the door and _go_ , but he was frozen to the spot.

If he left, something would happen. He was as sure of it as he was of his own heartbeat.

But if he didn’t go, and whatever it was still happened, and he could have _stopped_ it — wouldn’t that make him responsible for it?

He swallowed down the slimy feeling, exhaling slowly to settle his nerves, and palmed the wand in his pocket to make sure he had it. He wasn’t allowed to do magic outside of Hogwarts, but he was pretty sure that Hermione said there was an exception in life-threatening situations, which Harry found himself in with not inconsiderable frequency. Privet Drive _should_ be safe enough, but one could never be certain.

“What are you doing?” Aunt Petunia’s voice snapped out, disapproval — and _suspicion_ — clear in her tone.

“Going out,” he said, swiftly turning the handle, his decision made more by the desire to flee than bravery. He cast a glance at her over his shoulder and saw her reaching for the disinfectant under the sink.

“Don’t you take that _tone_ with me—”

But he shut the door behind him, taking off down the sidewalk at a swift pace before Aunt Petunia could open the door and drag him back inside.

* * *

The paranoia that he’d been having all day turned out to be right.

He’d returned to Number Four just in time for the news, where he’d been startled by the sound of a car backfiring — which was really someone apparating, and what a mystery it was for someone to be _apparating_ on Privet Drive — and choked by Uncle Vernon outside the window. That wasn’t necessarily the problem. Uncle Vernon hadn’t ever choked Harry before, but the physicality of it wasn’t uncharacteristic or a surprise.

Harry had taken off into the neighbourhood after that, missing the rest of the news in favour of escaping his uncle’s wrath. He’d met Dudley and his little gang, pooling their winnings from their latest brawl — seriously, whoever taught Dudley how to fight, because it certainly wasn’t Uncle Vernon, was no friend of Harry’s — and Harry hadn’t resisted the urge to confront them. Mostly his cousin, really. Harry wasn’t the scrawny little kid that Dudley used to torment anymore; although he was vulnerable in the Muggle world, he wasn’t _afraid_ anymore, and that was how Dudley had held so much power over him before.

“Hey, Big D,” he called, watching with grim satisfaction as four heads turned towards him in unison. Three jeering grins lined up behind one chalky, forced glare. Harry’s head throbbed with the adrenaline of weeks’ worth of pent up frustration, the dam finally broken.

“What d’you want?” Dudley said. Harry grinned. Despite his tough exterior, Harry knew his cousin well enough to know that he was wary.

Harry stuck his hands in his pockets, walking towards the group at a casual pace.

“I heard about your fight with Presley Clarke earlier. Stole his lunch money, did you?”

“So? He was a knobhead. Someone had to show him to respect his betters.” Dudley turned to face Harry fully as he got closer to the group, eyeing his pocket.

Harry sneered, feeling rather like Snape and deciding that it was appropriate in this case. “Daddy never told you it’s not _impressive_ to beat on a kid with asthma? Don’t answer that — I know he didn’t.”

Dudley’s face turned a striking shade of red, which might’ve been intimidating if Harry hadn’t been faced with Uncle Vernon’s signature purple for nearly fourteen years.

“Shut _up_ , freak!”

“No, really. Picking fights four-on-one with an _asthmatic_? It makes you look weak, Dudders. Why don’t you pick on someone who can fight back?”

Dudley’s complexion faded to white so quickly that Harry thought he must be feeling vertigo. But while Dudley read between the lines, could tell what Harry was implying, his meathead friends couldn’t — they started snickering amongst themselves, sharing an anticipatory look.

Piers Polkiss alone piped up, unaware of Dudley’s wide eyes.

“You don’t mean you, do you, _freak_?” He laughed, stepping forward and hitting Dudley’s shoulder instead of following on his heels like he clearly expected. The grin fell from his face. “Big D?”

The wind began to pick up as the sun dipped below the horizon. Dudley shivered.

Plastering a glare on, Dudley maintained eye contact with Harry as he spoke to his gang. “You go on. I’ll meet you at yours after I deal with the freak.”

Thick as his mates were, even they could tell that Dudley was putting on an act. They exchanged uncertain looks — Harry privately thought that not a one of them had a single independent thought among them — and mumbled goodbyes before they left. Dudley’s resolve was wavering, but he was determined not to show weakness. He wasn’t _successful_ , but Harry could respect the attempt.

“You can’t use … _it_ outside of school,” he said, but his eyes kept flickering down to Harry’s pocket.

“No, ‘course not. But I won’t be in school forever.” Harry said, waving off the concern like it was nothing. Realistically, Harry had no intention of finding Dudley after he turned seventeen and cursing him six ways to Sunday, but Dudley didn’t know that. And right now, Harry was itching for a fight.

No, he wouldn’t let himself cave to the temptation of using magic outside of school, but the threat of it would be enough; the fear of being turned into the rest of the pig was pretty much all that was keeping Dudley from being worse than he was.

Dudley clenched his fists at his sides, the gears clearly turning in his head, weighing the risks and rewards of beating his cousin bloody.

“You’re such a _freak_ ,” he decided on, eyes flashing even as he turned to walk away.

Harry caught up easily, bumping Dudley’s shoulder with his own just to be irritating. “Aw, come on. That’s no way to talk to family.”

Dudley cast a sideways glare at him but said nothing. He had no idea where they were walking — it was vaguely in the direction of Number Four, but Dudley had said that he would be going to Piers’ — but Harry was happy to walk in silence knowing that his very presence was setting Dudley on edge.

After what felt like ages but was more likely just a couple of minutes, Harry’s good mood crashed down to Earth. The cold, dense feeling that had gripped him earlier was back. Dudley noticed him stumble, casting a suspicious glare at him.

Everything seemed to come into sharp definition. Harry looked around as they walked, futilely searching for a pursuer that may have made him feel like this, but finding nobody. He wasn’t surprised by that — he hadn’t been being watched when he felt this way back at the house before he’d even left. Frowning, Harry looked forward again and tried to put it out of his mind.

Harry shivered. The wind had begun to pick up and he’d only left the house wearing one of Dudley’s old t-shirts.

Beside him, Dudley shivered.

His stomach turned. And suddenly, too late, everything clicked into place.

Dudley grabbed the collar of Harry’s t-shirt in both fists, pulling him close, eyes flared wide like a cornered animal’s.

“What are you doing?! Stop it!”

“I’m not doing anything! Let me go—”

Harry looked anywhere but at Dudley, trying to find where the creeping cold was coming from and finding nothing. He knew that they were here, but why?

 _Why else?_ the little voice in the back of his head piped up, the one he’d woken up with that morning.

In one moment, Harry was released from Dudley’s grip, and in the next, his world flashed and went dark. Harry stumbled, falling to the ground, his glasses flying off his face, his knee landing in a puddle from the sprinklers — Dudley had _punched_ him.

“Dudley, you git!” His voice sounded thick and Harry realized suddenly that his nose was throbbing. His vision was beginning to bloom into colour, but everything was still too dark.

“I’m serious! Stop doing _it_ or I’m telling Dad!”

“Dudley, we have bigger problems than your bloody Dad!”

Still on his knees — he wasn’t sure if he was able to stand without swaying, and he still needed to find his glasses — Harry thrust his hand into his pocket for his wand, only to find it gone.

“ _Fucking_ hell,” he muttered, casting one hand out to feel for his glasses and the other to feel for his wand. His hand closed around his glasses on the third try, and he fumbled to shove them back onto his face, ignoring the spike of pain he got from the nose pieces.

Harry had the sneaking suspicion that Dudley’s hands were still balled up into fists.

“You’re — you’re really not doing this?”

Harry sighed. Hard.

“No, of course I’m not! Why, for the love of Merlin,” Dudley flinched, but didn’t punch him. Harry counted that as a win. “would I want to make everything bloody cold?”

The knee of his jeans stiffened, the puddle beside him frosting over.

His hands paused in their search. His eyes widened.

Behind him, Dudley screamed.

Turning, Harry was met with the sight of Dudley being lifted by the throat — by a creature clad in ghostly hooded robes. Its long, spindly fingers wrapped around Dudley’s neck with ease, bringing the boy up to draw his face into the hood’s darkness.

Beyond the scene in front of him, a second Dementor hovered.

Harry resumed his frantic search, panic gripping his heart and adrenaline sending a tremor into his hands.

“ _Lumos_!” Centimetres away from his fingertips, his wand flared to life and Harry grabbed it, scrambling up to his feet.

“ _Expecto patronum —_ ”

From his wand, a silvery shield erupted, drawing the attention of the Dementors. The first one dropped Dudley’s limp body, recoiling from the light, but not retreating.

The Patronus shield would not be good enough to repel the Dementors, but it was enough to settle the tremor in Harry’s hands. He held the shield as long as he could, thinking of the happiest memory he had. Remembering the feeling of being _happy_.

His friends’ faces flashed through his mind. Hermione, smiling after she’d gotten a good mark on an essay, then Ron’s, after the Quidditch World Cup, waxing poetic about Viktor Krum. He saw Sirius, sitting in a cave off of Hogsmeade, digging into a roast chicken the House Elves had packed for him. Hogwarts hadn’t just been his home because it was the first place where he wasn’t called a freak — it was his first home because he was _accepted_.

The shield faded out and the Dementors regrouped with a more attractive target in mind.

Harry held onto the feeling of sitting by the fire in the common room, laughing over Ron asking Fleur Delacour to the Yule Ball and how he hadn’t even been mad that they were all laughing at his expense, because objectively, it was pretty funny.

“ _Expecto patronum!_ ”

A great silver stag leapt from the tip of his wand and galloped around the Dementors, rounding them up and chasing them away. They went with horrible screeches of fury, sounding for all the world like a dying animal.

He didn’t let go of the Patronus until the cold in his bones thawed out, leaving him drained of energy and panting.

“Dudley,” he said. Dudley lay on the ground, unmoving.

Harry frowned.

“ _Dudley_ ,” he tried again, crouching next to him and turning him onto his back. His eyes were closed. Harry peeled back one of his eyelids, but the result was inconclusive — if he’d been Kissed, he would have had a blank look in his eyes, but Harry wasn’t sure if that extended to when he wasn’t awake.

“Wanker,” he sighed, without any real heat in it.

It wasn’t Dudley’s fault if he’d just been so overwhelmed by being lifted into the air by a cloaked monster that he fainted.

Harry debated for a long moment about casting the Reviving Spell on him so he didn’t have to carry his large cousin all the way back to Privet Drive, but decided that it wasn’t worth the risk. He’d already used two — three, if he counted the _lumos_ — spells that night and he was sure to hear about it from the Improper Use of Magic office. He might be able to explain away the Patronuses, but he’d have a harder time explaining reviving Dudley.

With a great amount of effort, Harry hoisted Dudley to his feet and asked the universe what he did to deserve such a task.

* * *

It took an eternity to get Dudley back to Number Four, or at least it felt like it did. Harry wasn’t built for heavy lifting like this and he had to stop a couple of times, just to deposit Dudley on a nearby bench so he could catch his breath. He was tempted to do that one more time before they got back, but then he saw Uncle Vernon’s car, and for once he was pleased to see it.

Step by step, he dragged Dudley along the sidewalk, trying to ignore the burning in his lungs and his muscles.

Harry knew that the moment he got back to the house, he would be in for it, because Dudley still wasn’t awake. Aunt Petunia would fuss over Dudley’s prone form and Uncle Vernon would hit the ceiling — and Harry — because they would never believe that he _didn’t_ do this to their darling Diddykins. He considered the viability of just not going back, leaving Dudley on the front door and making a break for it, but wrote it off immediately. The few worldly possessions he had were in the cupboard under the stairs still and he couldn’t leave without them.

So that bound him to at least one more hour in Number Four — Harry wasn’t certain that Uncle Vernon wouldn’t just throw him out immediately — where he would try to break into the cupboard.

“You’d better not suck about this, Dudley,” Harry said, more for himself than anything. “I’ve carried you here from bloody London, it seems like.”

In the dead of night, Privet Drive was always quiet. No cars, no people, nothing. But in the flickering of the street lamps, Harry could have sworn he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. When he looked, it was no longer there, but he and Dudley were not the only ones awake at this hour — no matter how debatably that applied to Dudley in this case.

“Almost there,” he said, dragging Dudley up the steps and pushing open the door.

The house was dark, the light from the tv flickering in the hallway. Aunt Petunia was likely curled up on the end of the sofa, Uncle Vernon in his chair.

“— should be home by now,” Aunt Petunia was saying, worry colouring her tone even from the next room over. Uncle Vernon chuckled.

“Dear, our Dudley is a strong, independent boy, knows how to take care of himself. He’ll be just fine — that’s probably him now.”

Harry winced. Uncle Vernon wasn’t _wrong_ , per se …

“He’s here,” he called, cursing himself even as he spoke. He could have just dropped him on the stairs and fled.

Aunt Petunia materialized in the doorway.

“ _Dudley_!” She shrieked, eyes wide and face paling of what little colour she had as she flitted over to her son’s side. Her shriek summoned Uncle Vernon.

“ _BOY!_ ”

His fist closed around Harry’s shirt and shoved him into the wall.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SON?!”

“I bloody well saved his life, didn’t I?! Get _off_ me —” He said, prying at Uncle Vernon’s sausage-like fingers. Harry wrestled himself away from Uncle Vernon, putting enough space between them that he could whip out his wand and brandish it.

He really had no intention of using it, but it cooled the man’s determination to strangle his nephew.

“If I had done something to your son, why would I come back here? Why would I bring _him_ back here?” He reasoned, not quite appealing to Vernon — the man was as smart as the sun rose in the west — but figuring that Petunia would at least be able to keep his homicidal urges at bay. Assuming she didn’t also want to kill him.

“You — _boy_ — you will tell us what you did to him.”

Okay, so he’d overestimated Petunia’s intelligence, but she wasn’t going to shoot first and ask questions later, evidently, so Harry seized this chance with both hands.

“I ran into him and his mates at the park. We were talking, and then when Dudley and I were walking home, two Dementors turned up. I — Aunt Petunia?”

Harry didn’t expect either of them to know what Dementors were and had planned to keep explaining, but Aunt Petunia’s face suddenly blanching caught his eye. Vernon whirled around to look between his wife and Harry like they were a ping pong match.

“Keep going.” She said, leaving Harry feeling off balance.

“I — okay … well, Dementors make you feel dreadful, like you’ll never be happy again. There’s only one way to repel them, and one of the Dementors was lifting Dudley up to Kiss him —”

“ _Kiss_?!”

Uncle Vernon looked the most purple that Harry had ever seen him. He took deep, measured breaths to avoid telling him to shut up and let him finish.

“That’s what it’s called when they suck out your soul. One of them was about to suck out Dudley’s soul, so I fought them off, but Dudley had passed out. I don’t blame him. First time I saw a Dementor, I passed out too.”

He didn’t know why he told either of them that and his face heated up, but neither of them seemed particularly interested in the potential new blackmail material. Vernon’s mouth was opening and closing like a fish, and Petunia was making a grand impression of a Hogwarts ghost with how white she had gotten, but otherwise she seemed … surprisingly okay.

Her lips were pressed into a thin line and her eyes were wide with fear for her son, but she was at least functioning, unlike her husband.

“These Demento-thingys,” Uncle Vernon began, waving a hand as though it would help him grasp the situation better. “You fought them off? Gave ‘em the old one-two?”

Harry stared at him.

“Yeah,” he said, knowing that there was no point in correcting him.

Vernon deflated, like a balloon with a pin in it. “Where did they come from?”

Harry could not believe what was happening. Uncle Vernon? Willingly asking about something from the magical world?

“The wizard prison, Azkaban,” Petunia said, clapping a hand over her mouth.

Harry desperately wanted to go to bed.

“Yeah … how did you know that?”

“Never you mind, boy. Is my son going to be okay?”

Harry stuck his wand back into his pocket, feeling like the situation was not so life-threatening as it was mere moments ago, and sighed. Dudley wasn’t displaying any of the signs of being rendered soulless, though how much of that could be attributed to being unconscious, Harry couldn’t say. Still, he just had a feeling that Dudley would be fine.

“I think so,” he finally said. “When he wakes up, he’ll need chocolate. It’s the best medicine for this kind of attack.”

Harry was certain Dudley would be thrilled about it, if he could feel anything at all.

For a long moment, there was relative silence. Petunia sat by her son’s side, muttering small comforts into his ear and stroking his hair. Vernon stood between them and Harry as though Harry was the threat and he could protect them, but he looked rather out of sorts now that he was beginning to understand that he _wasn’t_ the reason Dudley was asleep. Harry had so many questions flying around in his head, from what the Dementors were doing in Surrey to how Petunia knew about them, but for once, he kept his mouth shut. The tension in the air was dissipating and he didn’t want to ignite it again.

But now that his life wasn’t in imminent danger, Harry knew that he would be receiving an owl shortly, if the incident with Dobby was any indication. An owl would almost certainly set Uncle Vernon off.

Finally, blessedly, Petunia spoke aloud.

“Go to your room, boy,” she said, voice cracking. Harry decided it wise not to argue with the direction, despite the fact that it hadn’t been his fault in any way.

Harry escaped up the stairs, leaving his distraught relatives behind, oddly hoping that Dudley would wake up soon.


End file.
